THE Bodrigans,
from a very early period, were connected with the borough of Looe.
Otto, or Otho de Bodrigan, was lord of the manor of Pendrim and Looe
in the reign of 'Edward II. Another Otho de Bodrigan was sheriff of
Cornwall in the third of Richard II., A.D. 1400.

Sir Henry Bodrigan was "attaynted for taking part
with King Richard III. against Henry VII. ; and, after flying into
Ireland, Sir Richard Egecombe, father of Sir Pears Egecombe, had
Bodrigan, and other parcels of Bodrigari's lands; and Trevanion had
part of Bodrigan's lands, as Restronget and Newham, both in Falmouth
Haven."

On the Barton of Bodrigan there exists what are
evidently the remains of ancient fortifications, and near them a piece
of waste land known as the Woeful Moor.

Here Sir Henry Edgecombe and Trevanion defeated the
great Bodrigan. He fled, and tradition preserves, on the side of the
cliff, the spot known as Bodrigan's Leap, from which he leapt into the
sea, and swam to a ship which kept near the shore. As he leapt the
precipice, he bequeathed, with a curse, "his extravagance to the
Trevanions, and his folly to the Edgecombes."

These families divided between them an estate said
to be worth, in those days, £10,000 per annum.

"At that period in our history when the law of the
strongest was the rule, three families in Cornwall were engaged in a
series of domestic wars; these were Bodrigan, Trevanion, and Edgecumbe.
And when Richard the Third obtained sovereign power, on the division
which then took place in the York faction, Bodrigan endeavoured to
seize the property of Edgecumbe, with little respect, as it
would seem, for the life of the possessor; but in the final struggle
at Bosworth Field, where Henry Tudor put an entire end to this contest
for power under the guise of property, by seizing the whole to
himself, Trevanion and Edgecumbe had the good fortune to appear on the
winning side, and subsequently availed themselves to the utmost of
belligerent rights against Bodrigan, as he had attempted to dQ before
against them. The last of that family was driven from his home, and
seems to have perished in exile. His property was divided between the
two families opposed to him, and, after the lapse of three hundred and
fifty years, continues to form a large portion of their respective
possessions."--Gilbert, vol iii., p. 204.

William de Bodrigan was lord of the manor of
Restronget, in the 12thof Henry IV. The family possessed it
till the beginning of the reign of Henry VII., when, on the attainder
of Bodrigan, it was given to William Trevanion. [a]

[a] See Gilbert, vol. iii., p.
193, and Bond's account of the Trelawnys in Bond's Looe